Distortion measurment in modern home lab

[michalwu]

Hi

I am owner of 30yr old distortion meter and would like to switch to something new.

What is your setup? What do you use?
I know that nowadays distortion analysers are uber expensive, so I suppose one have to use some modern setup ( e.g. better sound card, like 192KHz/24bit ASUS Xonar D1).

Is Cordell's Distortion Magnifier worth trying?
CordellAudio.com - The Distortion Magnifier
Do you use it?

Regards
michael

[SY]

Yes, the Cordell unit is very worth having.

A good 24/192 sound card with an inexpensive analog interface (Pete Millett's is available as a kit if you don't want to design/build one yourself) gives you remarkably good distortion measurement capability. I'm using AudioTester and Arta software, an M-Audio 192 PCI card, and both a home-made interface and Pete's unit.

[michalwu]

Originally Posted by SY

A good 24/192 sound card with an inexpensive analog interface (Pete Millett's is available as a kit if you don't want to design/build one yourself) gives you remarkably good distortion measurement capability.

SY, thank you for your post!

Do you mean this one? Soundcard Interface
I like it!

About Cordell's DM -kit is quite expensive.
I'd love to see how it is built, but I have no way of taking a look into "Linear Audio - Volume 0" article.
I am trying to work things by myself -it is cheaper this way.



mike

[SY]

That's the one. I changed the input impedance to 1M so I could use scope probes with it (10x often comes in handy). My own interface has BUF03 buffers for higher drive current, but also suffers from higher noise.

I have no problem measuring distortion components to better than -150dB.

Coincidentally, the editor/publisher of Linear Audio is sitting across the table from me at the moment and confirms that Volume 0 is still available.